Kale on Books: Civil and Revolutionary War books and the battle over power in America

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant embraced Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, but it was Gen. William T. Sherman and his destruction of Atlanta — and subsequent march through Georgia — that paved the way for the end of the Civil War.

Forty-five years ago, North Carolina/Virginia author Burke Davis, a long-time Colonial Williamsburg writer who lived in Williamsburg, penned “Sherman’s March: The First Full-Length Narrative of General William T. Sherman’s Devastating March through Georgia and the Carolinas” (1980).

The highly acclaimed volume was written in the years of the Lost Cause — the effort of Southerners to remember the Confederate cause in a positive light. Davis attempted to portray the story of the blue-and-gray soldiers and the women and men who tried to protect themselves while